Rupert Everett, Fame and biography

Apologies to readers of this blog if this isn't my best- see here for the reasons why I'm not functioning at fill tilt at the moment.

Sean Kennedy has written an interesting review on Salon of Rupert Everett's new biography. Basically Kennedy argues that Everett never gets to the point, never explains what his inner life was like, particularly what coming out in the nineties was like, but instead focuses on glitz and glamour, those he met, wined and dined.

Everything is relayed in a carefree this-happened-and-then-this-happened style, as if the events of his life were one long run-on sentence.

There is something in this that refers back to early cinematic history- particularly the question that haunts Citizen Kane- how do you tell the story of man's life. One way is to focus on the famous people he met, the cocktail parties, the glamour- one might call that the Everett way. Kennedy does have a point about the gay issue but what he is really writing about is that there is no underlying idea about Everett in this book, no blood flowing throgh it, a false sense of intimacy and no sense of emotional intimacy. It is an interesting issue that I don't pretend to want to delve into tonight as to what a biographer or historian can do and what duties he owes his subject, but there is something in what Kennedy says if the point is the truth. The truth about me is not that I've met William Hague and Michael Howard, though I have, its that I've met and loved numerous people who nobody would ever have heard of. Richard Nixon said that his mother was not the kind of person that people write books or newspaper profiles of, what he meant by that was that she wasn't famous- Mr Everrett wrote a 'book' which showed us the life of a famous person- I would agree with Mr Kennedy that far more interesting is the life of the unknown Everett!